Work in Progress - Vanessa

“Want to order pizza?” Marianne asks.

Beast says go for the leftovers.  Waterpark Mom warns me not to. And Marianne tells me more
about why she signed up for Professor’s class.  I see the Mean Girls’ faces in the dead ferns, 
they say, I told you so.  Aren’t you listening?  A gusty breeze blows their dead, dried hair into their lips 
and shuts them up, and they are back to being ferns again, thirsty for water.

The swimming pool on Marianne’s porch disappears.  The closest pool is across from Marianne’s house,
but this pool belongs in some otherworldly place like the pool dad told me about.  It is all decked out with
umbrellas and loungers, and big, fat cushions on all the furniture. Beast and our friends float on the giant
animals in the backyard paradise in the middle of the afternoon.

The whole time we hang out at the tropical island next door, we are sometimes in the ocean 
and sometimes out of it.  The only brightness is the sunshine outside.

A woman I don’t recognize cleans up the vomit on the edge of the pool steps.
Don gives me a ride home. I ask him if he knows Mega-Hero Muscle-Never-Lost-A-Match.  
I ask if he knows about Juniper. He tells me he knows a lot of people and can’t remember if Mega-Hero
is one of them.

“It’s a shame about Juniper,” he says. He pats my hands and drops me off in the driveway.
It isn’t like before, he doesn’t bang on Marianne’s door at three in the afternoon and tell her,
Vanessa went swimming again.